Morbid Fixation
by Desire is Obsolete
Summary: Behind him lies an Abbey in ruins. Ahead of him lies personal redemption. And an old destroyer is always in pursuit.
1. Chapter 1

---Chapter 1---  
  
He persevered since every tragedy he had faced, a martyr to suffer the burden of chronic death around him. He had never learned to swim in the endless expanse of sea that life was. His life flashed by around him every way he turned. This was a lone fisher, an outsider among other mustelids. The fur covering his body, like most fishers, was longer and darker than any ordinary vermin. He wore his enemy's colors as a cloth whilst remaining the prey from his unshakable shadow. Over his shoulder was slung a massive hide canteen, long ago emptied and allowing quicker movement.  
The fisher easily escalated himself over the unsteady highland mountainsides, around plateaus and through the depths of valleys, all the while keeping his eyes always concentrating on the dot in the distance growing steadily nearer. From this half-minded attempt to watch where he was headed he was constantly falling over large rocks in his way. He cut his paw on a rock; now he resolved to pay no mind to the hunter as he grew closer to meeting his destination.  
A shallow fold in the surface of a nearby plateau indicated this objective. He ran faster than a speeding hare until he reached the wall, and then hugged the surface away from the sunlight slowly descending in the slight west. The fisher stood not a moment to regain his breath, and swiftly ran into the depression on the tableland, veiling himself from direct sunlight. His pawsteps would be near invisible in the glaring sunlight above, but a scent was better to a blinded person than visibility. Not that his tracker was, indeed, sightless as a broken mirror.  
The recession opened even more, opening to form a small cavern, tight around the edges. No badger would be able to fit through these edges, though a more medium creature such as the fisher could easily. Slinging his canteen into the hole ahead of him, he ducked silently in. A squeal of surprise sounded from the inner depths, where there were lines of lit torches along the walls. The familiar face jumped out of the darkness, wielding a hatchet in offense and screaming out. The fisher, unarmed, cowered.  
"It's me, me, remember!"  
In an instant, the beast sprung back, dropping the axe and showing himself as an awakened shrew. He came to the newcomer's aid, lighting a tangle of wood in the center of the circular cave with one of the torches, and welcomed him.  
"Orileth! Me ole warrior you, what brings you back here, eh? Surely you're not being stalked by your midday shadow and runnin' from it all the way back 'ere?"  
The shrew, Skeen, knew not how correct he was.  
"Oh, here, I'll make ye some tea," said he.  
Wetting his parched throat upon a form of beverage, Orileth was more prepared to converse with the shrew.  
"His shadow is more irritable than you would think," he said, smiling, to which Skeen laughed heartily. "Yes, he's been quite a nuisance over this long deserted plain. I'm amazed that I was able to locate this place, he said, looking, unimpressed, at his surroundings. "Though it looks just about the same as last time, it's nice to see a friendly face amid such dark times."  
Skeen nodded. "You wouldn't believe what's been happening over on the isthmus. Those damned ermines went at it for some time, in civil war. And a few days down this path the temperature changes drastically, it's snowed like a rat's backside down where the forest lies."  
Relaxing on the ground, Orileth decided to take the risk of his stalker finding him. Using the canteen as a pillow from the tough rock interior, he watched the smoke from the conflagration empty up through a crack in the far ceiling of the hollow plateau as he spoke. "I only left temporarily, to go seek the aid of others to defeat those ermine lords. I found very few creatures who wished to help, and those who were died soon after by the hand of Martin's shadow."  
The shrew shuddered. "Wouldn't want to be them. How'd ye get away?"  
"It was no simple thing. I was on the receiving end of several seasons of stealth training. Hopefully it hasn't worn out by now. Well, the forests were easily navigable by themselves; I could escape more easily from an enemy than this desolate topography."  
"Did you ever find the second volcano, eh, whassitcalled. Sallamannasron?"  
"You mean Salamandastron? Negative."  
The conversation faltered for a few seconds. Skeen decided to break the silence with a practical conversation. "So, guess we can get away from this wretched place," Skeen said, glaring hardheartedly up at the roof. Yew wouldn't imagine how hard it is to live 'ere in some hollow rock."  
"Actually, I can," said Orileth huffily.  
"Oh," Skeen said, averting his eyes. "...Right." 


	2. Morbid Fixation Poem

The bane of my life backwards  
Approaching always it  
Objects our seasons  
Kindness to my side  
I start to  
Collide with our terminus  
That decides to flee from strife  
But an inner feeling dwells within  
That nothing can bestow  
For the insult hast been dealt  
Donning the mists around me  
As its own  
And to hang its own colors  
Seems fit  
My shadow is infected  
As it thinks between the lines  
I thank you, old assassin  
For bringing me this way  
The words fly from your lips as bullets  
To destroy the walls of opposition  
Your secondary heads squirm at my feet  
But their collaborator you have not been  
I once may have been empty  
Guess again  
My domicile giggles wickedly  
As it breaks the rope  
That would have fallen anyway  
But now has fled my only  
Raison d'être  
  
Copyright © Desire_Is_Obsolete, aka Kichacid 


	3. Chapter 2

2  
  
The glaring sun was shrinking still behind the mountains to their backs as the two ran on. Skeen had been correct in saying that the warmth skyrocketed the further north they went. The nearly uneventful journey began with the fisher dying of heat and cursing the sun, and ended with him attempting to curse the same sun for not appearing through intense shivering.  
This new cold was making Essol shiver. He had been alongside the whole time, and Orileth ignored him. Now he was angry. "What is with you?" he shrieked. "Can you not see the fucking badger in front of you? I shouldn't be that hard to spot!"  
Orileth turned towards the figment. "Go away, damn you."  
The shrew Skeen jumped. "Who the blazes you talking to?" Skeen couldn't see Essol. Would never see Essol. The badger was air, oxygen, empty matter to Skeen.  
...And everyone else. Except Orileth.  
The sun had long been vanquished by darkness' deadly snares. The moon was permitted to shine only enough light to barely make out the faint rudimentary bright colors in the night. The cold forest had festooned herself in a veil of obscurity and shoes of snow. Orileth turned to Skeen. "These bugs... they're everywhere."  
Skeen nodded behind an obscure glance and returned to walking, unknown of the secret.  
The impish badger continued to harass Orileth, always traveling right behind him. "'Thine spirit divine', they used to say. Stupid riverling, pay attention to me. Go ahead and fucking announce your condition!" With every profanity tremors shook through the badger's body, as if the very word brought pain to him yet he attempted to wear it off. Orileth turned towards the creature and aimed a kick at the beast. He knew that it would do no physical damage to the specter, but Essol didn't realize this. He quaked with fear each time he was threatened "physically". Despite his race's normally brutish, intimidating appearance, this one was scrawny, short and underdeveloped. And not much of a walker. He would continuously shout needlessly when supposedly being slain by the sun's rays or similar problems countless times each day, and yet always managed to keep up with Orileth to prolong his complaints.  
"Vermin!" squeaked the cowardly badger over his shoulder as he tore off through the dense forest, away from his assailant, but certain to reappear sometime else. Orileth returned to the hike, shrugging at Skeen, who was watching him questioningly.  
  
Martin had been a noble creature. One who bled openly, who suffered patently from his losses. The virtuous surface of him he warmed daily in the sun, to prepare for life's joys. There was so much more of these than sadness and regret in his founded Redwall.  
But there had been another side to this contentment. A murky side which reflected his need of preoccupation, which typically consisted of much beastslaughter. A side that had awakened ever since his eyes lay upon his father's sword and that bloodthirsty glint grew in the back of those eyeballs began to develop.  
Martin's father, Luke, had been fairly strict in containing his sword from his son. But temptation overcame all warning signs in Martin's head. Once he had deliberately stolen the sword while Luke was on a foraging trip. Less than ten minutes later, he was rewarded harshly, and Luke began to take further precautions against capture of his most prized possession. The father began to lack faith in his child, however it was restored over time, and the incident forgotten. But there had been something else lurking in the battle light within young Martin's eyes when he finally began to wield the blade expertly. Luke had dismissed the look as unimportant; he assured himself that he must have also looked this way when the sword was given to him.  
But Badrang, the lord of Marshank, who had become quite acquainted with the mouse before, destroyed the blade. Badrang lay dead before many seasons' time after their second meeting.  
He had searched for bigger and better things before long. His tagalong friends witnessed the partially evil radiance in Martin's eyes when he had fought alongside them, and yet failed to properly recognize it. Easy explanations were plentiful. Before long he had visited Salamandastron, the mountain fortress of the badger lords, and Lord Brocktree had forged his second sword, this one far more durable and destructive than his father's. The light of the eyes, both righteous and vicious, was borne by Martin again, and to a higher extent than ever before. He soon wreaked vengeful torrent upon Tsarmina the wildcat's forces as the near-demonic, terrifying warrior with shadowed eyes.  
After many of his adventures, Martin finally wore out his bloody spirit for the interim. He resigned to Redwall, his new kingdom, and gave up his sword for total peace.  
Or so the records say.  
Nobeast returning from a Martin-free feast would notice the graceful pawmarks upon an unused sword. Nobeast would ever think to examine the sword of Martin to closely, for their wellbeing.  
One beast, a young ottermaid, was the only one who witnessed the brutal practices that Martin would carry out during certain events, and the innocent vowed to herself never to tell a soul. She was lost in the Redwall records forever, all of her contained thoughts unable to be inscribed into traditional parchment upon her death.  
More than half a century later, a newborn mouse cried his first. He was completely pitch-black, from ear to tail. His parents believed him destined to become Redwall's new warrior. But signs of disobedience and grudge clouded his otherwise angelic tendencies, and he fiercely competed with his fellow youngsters to prove his skills overall superior to others. He constantly indicated weaknesses and deficits in others, whilst running his own circles around them, sometimes literally, exploiting the others' underperformances with ferocious intensity. If proven to have a shortfall of his own, he would sulk; also he to mocked his "better" relentlessly with insults that were extremely difficult to comeback. After his parents passed away, and the mouse was nearly an adult, he went into a deep state of mourning. Some theories claimed that the black mouse intentionally poisoned his only blood relations and used his bereavement as a cover-up, but many were unwilling to believe that such treachery could exist in this peaceful environment.  
A full three days after his parents' deaths, the mouse departed into Mossflower Woods, away from the friendliness and hospitality of Redwall. If this were not already a shocker for the inhabitants of the stone abbey, he also took Martin's sword, whose owner was long deceased. It is said that in this period of time the mouse ran away with a fox associate, whom he met occasionally by the edge of the woods, and began to train with the sword and an array of other weapons, which he never would have been given access to had he stayed in Redwall. Many long seasons passed, and after the mouse was satisfied with his experience, he ruthlessly butchered his vermin friend and made once again for Redwall.  
The recognition was immediate; it was difficult to find black mice, and only two, including the current one, had ever been inside Redwall Abbey. The sword of Martin had been gone long; much of the populace of Redwall had given up on finding it once more. But the mouse had concealed the sword well, and none even questioned him about it as he walked through the gates, familiar faces smothering him and his back weighted with a slightly vertically pointed sack.  
Then, ten days after his return, the murders started. They began when an elder hare had bafflingly vanished. Two days into the disappearance and they discovered his mutilated body at the bottom of the pond, his body weighted by rocks. The body had been nearly completely devoured by fish. The second body, that of a mole, was found hanging off the side of the abbey walltop, completely skinned, and with a flagpole speared through a flap of flesh on his back. He waved to and fro in the wind. The victims piled up, and there was barely enough time for the abbeydwellers to realize that the black-furred mouse was the death-dealer; by the time they had, all of the remaining occupants of the abbey were lured and locked inside of Cavern Hole and watching the place burn. Redwall suffered its final loss that day. It seemed as though this mouse of black had been on the receiving end of the walk-in spirit of the shadowed half of the first great champion of the abbey. Into the flames he roared his self-donned alias, swinging his new sword on high...  
He called himself the Ultimatum. 


	4. Chapter 3

3  
  
Lord Benegal eyed the sea, in all its unexplainable extent, through the east window of the highest tower of his central bastion. Morning light shone through the window, highlighting the ermine's frame, and a small portion of the falling snow made its way inside his room. He trembled in the cold. A fertile community of vermin thrived in his small kingdom, protected by Benegal and his army, surviving off of the luscious knowledge of the rainforest fruits. The ermine blinked sea-air from his tired eyes, preventing it from causing him any more fatigue, and stared down towards the shore through the stone window, some tens of miles off. A small multicultural township of the so-called "righteous" beasts had been born there before the siege of the mountain Heratussondra, had been exchanging blows with his own kingdom recently. The siege that had included his former ally Destadon had initiated those beasts' attacks. He quaked with anger (and dread) from the mental image of Destadon's mug. He wanted that inferior ermine dead before his premeditated life of affluence and royalty was inclusive. Destadon's head was to be pinned upon a stake atop his tower until the eyes dispersed, the skin was eaten away by faithful insects, and the blood ran dry. And there it would still remain, like a dreamcatcher for Benegal, warding away all of his outlandish incubuses of late.  
The ermine turned around, towards the weasel captain who had only just (and soundlessly, at that) arrived in his chamber. The walls were dark and reflected little light, but the open skylights pouring in sunlight helped the newcomer make out the ermine warlord, with his malicious green eyes that pierced the night like a cat's. "Yes, what brings you here?" Lord Benegal demanded, almost wholly concentrating upon the form in front of him, apart from the jerky movements the orbs in his head made as they went upon their route. Knowing the Lord's mood to be highly impulsive, the captain phrased his words as neutrally as he could choose them. "The um... the gatekeeper's been err... reported missing, sir. Think he disappeared overnight, but we... Don't know who did it."  
Benegal glared at the captain for a while more, then sighed and began to pace around his room. After a few seconds he shot an ominous look back at the captain. "Well? You know what to do, gather the troops and arbitrarily allocate the task to a strong, worthy creature! Before..."  
The doorway was no longer taken up by a weasel. Benegal laughed spitefully down the stone stairway. Most everything in Fort Exodus was stone. The laugh reverberated throughout the entire upper levels, chilling all who labored there.  
  
The head of Krisskus, the once-was ferret gatekeeper of Fort Exodus, was bound to a certain spear that belonged to none other than the most famous otter of the coastal forests. His name was Dencen, and he had founded the small village due north of the mountain of Heratussondra. His village had been a major trading factor with the mountain kingdom. until, of course, those ermines had razed its insides with their brutal tactics, causing an avalanche that wiped out every creature within its walls. Dencen dearly wished the offending creatures dead, and he meant to illustrate this for them before their very eyes.  
He was keeping morning watch. He had slept until all others' cycles were up, then stood as last sentry in the balcony of the central tower. This building was cheaply constructed; made of wood from the surrounding forest and apt to catching aflame if a major battle ever did occur. And Dencen was sure one would before long.  
He straddled a javelin, the symbol of a hawk's beak engraved into its side, and stood up from his stool seat. He preferred to stand; it was less likely to sleep while in the position. He walked to the side of the balcony and threw his arms down upon the rail, putting his head down for a few seconds but then returned his hateful gaze to switching in between the two castles, each surrounded by its own thriving town, each an icon of wholesome malevolence, like twin pustules upon an otherwise perfect topography, but each labeled differently: the one to his left was called Ileson, and to his right was Fort Exodus. They stood on opposing sides of the mountain that had once been so magnificent and ruled by a commendable hero of the lands. Now the mountain was as uninhabitable as the underside of a glacier.  
Dencen shivered. The thick layer snow jacketing the ground and canopy of Soulforest, the long woodland area in the far north that stretched from afar to the coast, had been unusually deep this year, not that it was ever warm in this region to begin with. He looked towards a large boulder nearly entirely covered in snow out of pure tedium. For a second he swore he saw the great form of some huge beast behind it. He leapt to his feet, and it was gone. Quickly raising his javelin, he hesitated before he made an oversight. It was often said that the light rebounding off snow could cause mirages. But he was completely convinced when he witnessed the gigantic lynx, perfectly camouflaged and walking gracefully on all fours, striding easily across the blanket of snow, indifferent to the blade-wielding otter above him. It maintained its equanimity as Dencen rushed atop the rail, balancing his weight deftly by relying solely on his leg muscles, and waved the javelin on high. "You!" he shouted in a somewhat raspy voice, a strange characteristic of many of the village's residents. His shout had attracted attention, and a young squirrelmaid, along with two shrewguards, came barreling up the ladder leading to the terrace. The squirrelmaid, whose name was Hayless, wore a thick hide cap and coat, and brandished a small sling and a sack of stones. However, the shrews, Wailtz and Grook, had made very little progress up to the deck, as they were continuously quarreling about who should get the pike and who the spear. In their view, the longer was infallibly the more powerful. Hayless glowered down on the two, who immediately cut short their disagreement as her cry rang out fiercely: "Shut up!" Then they took whichever weapon was nearest to them and began to squabble on who would get up the ladder first.  
The squirrel Hayless shook her head in acceptance and took her first glance at the enemy below. Her eyes widened for a few seconds, blinked several times, then went narrower than Dencen had ever seen them. The fierce wildcat's head slowly, oh so slowly until it seemed that all of a sudden it was looking directly at them. Hayless saw this through the dim light. "Can it speak?" she asked quietly. "Not from what I've been able to tell so far," Dencen told her. "...Which isn't much."  
He then shouted down to it, "You can hear me, so can you understand me? Get away from here, we don't want to have to do innocents any harm."  
Teeth like sickles emerged from the mouth of the lynx, and it began to make a hoarse growling sound, much like a laugh. After several seconds of this noise, the beast calmed down and sat on the ground, then quickly rethought this with a slightly pained expression and got back to his feet. "I cannot be innocent," it said in a deep voice. "For I have sinned as well." It gave them a crooked glance. "As you have."  
Hayless nearly laughed, convinced that the beast posed no immediate threat. "What, is he trying to pretend that he has some hidden prophecy of imminence? If he's trying to win himself a new eyepatch, he's doing an admirable job." She loaded a stone into her sling. "Maybe it's what he ought to have..."  
Wailtz, having just reached the summit of the expedition ahead of Grook, stopped her. "'Ey, yer doin' no good fer us by killin' 'im. Prolly got some secret army or sum'pin back in dem woods, waitin' fer us ter launch some attack."  
Grook, always willing to disagree with his companion, found this relatively preposterous. "An' how'd a lonely like 'im get some great army of the likes o' the Lords in these 'ere woods? All yer speculations're laughable!" And, complying with himself, he fell to the ground and began to demonstrate just how funny it was. Hayless and Dencen watched them perplexedly. Concerned at this lack of attention, the lynx blasphemed each of their mothers and received a hail of stones from an enraged Hayless. Several of them impacted on the beast. One hit him directly under the eye. He took flight, nursing his wounds along the way back to the safeguard of the woods. After him, the incensed squirrelmaid screeched, "Next time it's your eye!"  
But the escapade had not yet been concluded; it had only commenced. Dencen was watching the edge of the chaparral and, after some time, turned to Hayless, who had decided not to celebrate her minor victory. "Quite a reckless move," he said. "Go awake Eris, he may need to see this."  
Hayless frowned at the woods for more moments, then turned and went to rouse the badger. 


End file.
